The U.S. Postal Service (USPS) transports over 680 million items of mail every day. These items could be a variety of things such as letters, packages, printed matters, and express mail. Generally, these items are received at, or picked up and brought to, a postal operations center. In the center, the mail items are placed in trays and containers and either sorted with an Air Contracting Data Collection System (ACDCS) or placed in trays and containers and transferred to the transport facility for sorting with the ACDCS. The ACDCS sorts and assigns the mail items to a transport mode for delivery. The process of selecting the mode of transportation from origin to destination is referred to as mail item assignment. The ACDCS only assigns mail items to air delivery modes. The ACDCS does not have the capability, nor can it be modified to have the capability, to perform dynamic assignments, based on a lowest cost service window. The ACDCS is a system for a mail facility to process mail and assign it to commercial air flights.
FIG. 1A provides an illustration of one of the current procedures for assigning mail items to delivery modes. In the illustrated procedure, mail items may be brought from a customer facility 102 to a postal operations center 104 and placed in trays or containers. In center 104, the trays and containers 106 are processed, based upon the types of mail items, and then placed with the outgoing mail from the center. However, before the outgoing mail items leave the center, the mail items may be sorted either manually or using the ACDCS.
If manual sorting is used, the mail items are separated into surface and air mail items. Then, clerks or mail handlers further separate the surface mail items and assign them to delivery trucks. The air mail items, on the other hand, after being manually separated, are either processed and assigned with the ACDCS at the postal operation center 104 and then transferred to the transportation facility 108 or are first transferred from the postal operation center 104 to the transportation facility 108 and then processed using the ACDCS. Thus, the mail items are either processed by the ACDCS at the postal operation center 104 or at the transportation facility 108 and then assigned to the appropriate flights at a mode of transportation 110.
FIG. 1B illustrates another current procedure for assigning mail items to delivery modes. This method is similar to the one illustrated in FIG. 1A, except for the fact that the mail items are not delivered by the individual customers to the postal operation center; therefore, the mail items are not grouped by customer. In this method, the groups of mail items that are collected in trays and containers 106 contain mail items from multiple customers and from collection boxes. Like the process described in FIG. 1A, the mail items are separated into surface and air mail items, and the air mail items are either processed and assigned with the ACDCS at the postal operation center 104 and then transferred to the transportation facility 108; or the mail items are first transferred from the postal operation center 104 to the transportation facility 108 and then processed using the ACDCS.
For efficient, cost effective operation, it is important for the USPS to select from a variety of transportation modes to assign the transportation mode that is the fastest, most cost effective, and properly suited for the type of mail item to be delivered. The variety of transportation modes may include tractor trailers, trains, ships, and commercial airlines or dedicated air transporters.
Therefore, there is a need for a system and method that meets the above identified criteria on a broad scale. The solution requires a network in which assignments may occur at various points in the mail item processing. For example, the mail item assignment may take place at the customer facility 102, postal operations center 104, a competitor's site, or transportation facility 108. The assignments at these facilities may be made based on a set of business rules that ensure that most efficient and cost effective mode of transportation is selected.